


Panacea

by Kaydel



Category: Original Work
Genre: Alternate History, Ancient History, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-17
Updated: 2019-02-17
Packaged: 2019-10-22 09:28:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17660165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kaydel/pseuds/Kaydel
Summary: In the wake of a devastating plague, the last remaining physician in a besieged city finds help in the unlikeliest of beings.





	Panacea

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Noceu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Noceu/gifts).



“I know why you’re here.”

It is an odd way, he thinks, to greet the man standing at the foot of his bed in the middle of the night. But he has seen too much over the past few months. Days of bandaging the wounded, helping to nurse the sick, and comforting the families of the dead. The current plague sweeping through this part of the country has been merciless. Priests are barricaded in their temples, offering sacrifices to gods who seem not to hear their pleas. Doctors like him are left to deal with the panic of the common folk, and too often fall victim to the same disease that they treat, shaking and sweaty and panicked just as their patients are. He has barely slept in three days, so it seems appropriate that tonight, when he finally has had the chance to be alone with his thoughts (frightening as they are), a visitor should come to disturb his rest.

“Do you, physician?” 

The man standing before the doctor is as beautiful as any of the marble sculptures that line the avenues into the city. Once he had thought them glorious, a symbol of their civilisation. Now they seem macabre heralds for the dead. But this man takes his breath away. Dark hair that curls at his shoulder, eyes that flash golden in the firelight, and features so sharp the gods themselves would be jealous. And those lips; how luscious and red they are. This man makes him ache for the touch of another, even though it has been nearly a year since the last time he had found himself at leisure to think of his own pleasure.

Perhaps that is the point. His visitor seems amused, more than anything, a smile curving those full lips.

“And here I thought myself a master of stealth. Tell me, Wise One, since you are so learned in these things. Why am I here?” The visitor’s tone is slightly mocking, but he can see the flash of danger in the other man’s eyes. Something tells him this stranger is not one to be trifled with.

“You’ve come to offer to help me find my final rest, haven’t you?” With a sigh, he stands up from his bed. “I did not think the enemy would stoop so low as to send assassins to kill physicians, but I cannot say that I am surprised. After all, they have been camped outside our city walls for months. I only thought they would wait until we were all dead of the plague before marching in and taking over.”

He cannot help the tremor in his voice. After all, one does not expect to meet one’s killer with any great semblance of calm. But he is determined to die with dignity and he lifts his chin before closing his eyes and offering a prayer to any gods still around to listen. May his death by swift and painless. May he meet his parents and brother in the fields of the afterlife.

“You are a strange one,” the stranger says, suddenly sounding as though he is standing right behind him, which is puzzling. There is no way someone could move that quickly around his cramped quarters, which he only has because the last doctor died this past summer, along with most of the medical team. “Most of those I visit are either desperate for relief or in denial about their desire. You are neither, it seems. I must have been called here for some other reason.”

There is a weird quality to the air around them. It feels heavy, loaded with some kind of unknown power, coiled like a serpent in anticipation of a strike. 

Without warning he is pushed back down onto his camp bed. A startled squawk is the only sound that leaves his lips and suddenly the stranger is looming over him like some kind of creature from the Underworld. 

Which, he supposes he should have realised right away, the man now straddling him is. He hopes he lives long enough to figure out which one exactly. 

“You seek oblivion, physician? I should have smelt it on you as soon as I landed in this gods-forsaken land, but there was so much death around me. My senses were muddled.” Despite the bitter winter cold, the stranger’s skin is hot to the touch. Not the fever-heat he has become too familiar with in the past months, but the steady coursing burn of physical desire. The stranger’s hands shred his threadbare robes and they fall to the floor in ribbons. “But I shall remedy that oversight now. You wish to be free of this endless drudge, don’t you? To forget this wasteland and finally take your leave of all these never-ending hordes of the dying?”

Shamefully, he does recall offering a silent prayer to the god of healing for such a blessing. But any gods interested in the welfare of their faithful servant would surely not send a demon such as this to aid him, would they? Despite everything — the precarious situation, the death around him, and the heavy weight of his exhaustion — he finds himself growing hard at the stranger’s touch. The man’s fingertips seem to trail fire in their wake as they explore his captive body, curling around his arms and pinning them above his head before moving down to his thighs.

He’s heard of creatures like this, when he was a child and his mother told him the legends that have passed through the many generations they have called this island nation their home. He’d been frightened then, as she waved her hands in front of the hearth and told him stories of men and women being visited by creatures who only wanted to lay with them for their dark, unwholesome plans. More recently, too, before the plague had struck, he had treated a gibbering madmen who had ranted about being ravished by a woman who entered his house at night and sucked the life out of him and turned his mind to dust. He’d paid it no heed, of course. What rational being would pay credence to such stories?

“What if I am?” He asks the stranger now, pushing himself up and against the flimsy headboard of his bed. “I was led to believe that creatures such as yourself only want our seed, and offer only unrequited pining and death in return.” He blushes at the images this conjures, realising the absurdity of his protest, and adds, “Though, if you do not mind, I would rather you cut out the pining and kill me after you have taken what you need.”

This provokes a laugh that does little to soothe his overwrought nerves. “You place a lot of faith in your ability to persuade me, and too much of it in the veracity of the tales your ancestors tell about my kind.” 

The stranger trails a finger down the side of his face, cups his chin, and he cannot help gasping aloud at the warmth of it and the promises it seems to hold. “You have the face of a man who should have spent his life in comfort, passing the time with many lovers to share your bed and a whole brood of offspring to carry on your legacy. Instead, I find you here, the brightest spark of life left in the middle of a cleansing plague sent from the gods to punish your fellow mortals for their hubris. Tell me, who would mourn you if I left you on this bed now, drained and out of your mind?”

Even as he speaks, the stranger loosens his hold and appears to strip his clothes off, though he cannot see where they fall. Each piece of clothing seems to shimmer and then disappear as it is removed; first the dark furred overcoat, an incongruously ordinary soldier’s cuirass, then a seemingly too-thin tunic, finally the loincloth. The stranger’s body is strong and his skin is kissed golden by the sun, bearing the toned muscles of a professional soldier, though showing none of the scars of battle. He tries not to stare too blatantly, though this is doubtless what the stranger wants of him.

It is cruel that the stranger would point out his hopeless situation here; his lack of anything left to call a family, the opportunities for a better life now denied to him. Especially since he has no chance of escaping. The realisation makes him angry and he tries to push the stranger off him, though this is also futile. “I suppose the question is rhetorical, is it not? If… _when_ you have finished taking what you need from me, I will have no one to mourn me, and no where left to go. Doubtless the plague will take me to the Ferryman, as it has with all of the other healers who worked alongside me. Gods only know why I’ve been spared this long.”

The stranger cocks his head, as a curious wolf would. “You do not see some higher purpose in being immune?”

He laughs this time, without any humour. “It is not much of a life if you are the only one left alive in the charnel house. If the plague is sent from the gods, then my very survival would defy their will. Being a walking sacrilege to them is not very enticing.”

“It isn’t often that I am able to offer succour,” the stranger says, raising an eyebrow, “but I think you have mistaken your purpose here. You do not see any opportunity for you to distinguish yourself by saving the population? You are far more skilled than you believe yourself to be. The sick in this camp all bear the imprint of your healing.”

“Oh, that.” He allows himself a rueful smile. It is not every day a mortal man earns the praise of otherwordly beings. “An experimental treatment. We have tried everything else with no luck. There aren’t any other doctors for me to consult, and the priests are either dead or sacrificing the last of our livestock. If my patients survive till the next full moon, I’ll be surprised.”

The stranger looks distinctly unimpressed. “These patients of yours have survived longer than the others, according to the soldiers keeping watch. It is unbecoming of you to claim that your discovery has not made any difference to their survival. I may be a creature of destruction, but I recognise the work that goes into preserving life. Besides, if you all died, where would I derive my pleasure?”

This time, the stranger presses him back down onto the bed, using nothing more than the flat of his hand. He struggles against it, but finds the weight immovable. “Lie down. A gift, my beautiful physician. You walk around here like a dead man, insensitive to the good works that you do for the suffering. You neglect everything about your person for the sake of tending to the sick and have no heart for anything else. The gods are not unobservant, nor ungrateful. You have asked for rest, and rest I shall give to you.”

If it were anyone else, he would blush at being called beautiful. It has been so long since others have used such words to describe him, especially now, when he has let his hair grow out a little too long to be acceptable and it is touched with too much grey. His beard, though, is neatly trimmed each day when he rises. It is the one thing about his appearance he still cares about. Small vanities, he thinks. Gestures so insignificant they must seem like so much chaff in the wind to beings who contemplate eternity.

Then the stranger bends down and kisses him, and he feels the breath rush out of his body. It is like nothing else he has ever felt, gentle and demanding all at once, the stranger’s lips coaxing his mouth open, their tongues tangling together, the heavy heat between them growing so quickly it threatens to overwhelm him completely. The stranger’s teeth are sharp; they tug at his lips, his neck, and the lines of his collarbones, lips and tongue conspiring to leave evidence of the stranger’s exploration of his body. He utters a blasphemy, tries to pull the stranger’s mouth back to his own, and receives only a chuckle in reply.

“Ah, there is my fine warrior.”

The tone of the stranger’s voice is strangely familiar, and he tries to think why this should be so, but cannot come up with any logical reason. His mind is much too preoccupied with how intoxicating the stranger’s every touch feels, as if he were being caressed all over his body, all at once, with fingers and lips and tongue and teeth. He can feel the weight of the stranger’s body above him, solid and yet enveloping him with its warmth. Fingers wrap themselves around his cock, which is desperately hard, aching for relief. The stranger begins to stroke him slowly, alternating light touches with a firmer grip, his thumb rubbing at the tip of his slit, winding thick tendrils of lust around his chest, constricting his breathing.

He is sure his moans are loud enough to rouse the guards stationed nearby, but strangely, he cannot find it in him to care. His back arches up from the bed, into the stranger’s eager grasp. He is hanging on to the stranger’s arms, wordless cries leaving his mouth, hips fucking into the stranger’s hand. The stranger makes a low, feral sound in the bottom of his throat, sounding more like a hungry predator than a human lover, and swallows his moans with his lips, drinking in his voiceless petition. 

_Yes, oh yes, my sweet. Lay your cares aside for me._

He is sure the stranger does not say the words out loud, but he hears them in his mind, as loudly as if they had been whispered in his ear. He is heedless of anything apart from what is happening on his poor little camp bed now, uncaring of anything more immediate than the most basic demand of his body that the stranger _not stop what he is doing_. He reaches out to touch the stranger’s perfect body; the line of his biceps, the flat plane of his stomach and the sharply defined abdominal muscles. Further down, he finds the stranger’s cock as hard and erect as his own and tries to mimic the smooth movement of the stranger’s hand, however inexpertly. The only reaction is the barest gasp from the body above him, so slight he thinks he must have misheard.

_Will you never think only of yourself?_

He laughs at the question, feeling delirious, and answers without thinking. “Not when I have the chance to touch beauty like yours. What pleasure is to be had should be shared.”

For a moment he feels the stranger’s touch falter and wonders if he has inadvertently offended his visitor. An apology forms himself on his lips, but is suddenly seared away by a fiercer kiss than the ones they have just shared. The perfection of it is almost painful, the way they rise to meet each other, their tongues curling around each other, teeth clashing and biting. They kiss again, and for the first time he feels a similar hunger in the stranger’s touch. Not the cool, sophisticated movements of a being made for the sole purpose of stealing an unfortunate’s seed, but the urgency and desperation of lovers who know that their time together is limited.

By some unspoken agreement between them, he finds himself laying back in the bed and watching as the stranger sits up and regards him with those golden eyes that flash fire and an inscrutable expression on his face.

“How would you have me?” The stranger asks after a moment, his voice low, the curve of his arse pressed suggestively against his aching cock.

“Like this,” he whispers, ashamed of how broken his voice is, how his outwardly calm demeanour has been so thoroughly destroyed by this wondrous creature of heat and desire. “Ride me. Make me feel alive for you.”

The stranger obliges, lifting his hips and sliding down, down, down onto him, all wet, tight heat. He reaches out, digging his greedy fingers into the soft flesh of the stranger’s arse, and thrusts into him, watching as the stranger matches the rhythm of his thrusting, wanting to sear having this incredible man on top of him indelibly in his memory. He keeps fucking up into the stranger’s heat, watching with fascination as the expression on the stranger’s face changes from something resembling bemusement, to uncertainty and then to something so open and unguarded his is unsure of what name to put to it, even as the sounds of their fucking fill the small space of his tent. 

The need for completion obliterates all other senses. He feels his crisis screaming down upon him, even as he stares up into the stranger’s eyes, hoping for something he is not even sure he knows what to name. Desperation turns him reckless and he thrusts up wildly, his hips unsteady. The stranger grinds down against him, his expression wild and ancient, and he is reminded how unlike other men the man he is making love to is. 

He comes with a loud groan of completion, hips surging up one last time before he spends himself deep inside the stranger. The stranger utters a curse word in a language that sounds nothing like his own and collapses on top of him, his seed strangely cool against their heated skin.

“Will I remember you?” He asks, after he has caught his breath and they share an oddly tender kiss. “Or am I doomed to suffer the amnesia you offer others?”

The stranger sighs. “I offered you only a moment’s respite from your duty, physician. The gods will not be pleased if you should seek to prevent me from mine.”

The answer irks him. “Which is what, exactly? The downfall of men? Let us not speak in riddles.”

“We all have a role to play in the unfolding of history, foolish one. Not all chance encounters lead to the epic love your poets sing songs about.” The stranger stands up, and with a snap of his fingers is instantly garbed in his soldier’s armour. His expression is closed once more, unreadable with the firelight flickering over the contours of his face. The stranger leans over, presses fingers against his temple. “Sleep now, and wake with greater purpose.”

Despite his fight to stay awake, he feels himself falling into the welcome oblivion of sleep, so long denied to him. Just as it takes hold, he thinks he hears the stranger’s voice once more.

“May the gods look more mercifully on you, until I find you again, my love.”

***

When he wakes, he finds himself still clad in yesterday’s clothes, and with a vague memory that something important passed the night before. Some realisation of a lost valuable regained, and lost again. Before he can delve too deeply into his dreams, an orderly comes running into his tent to tell him that some of the patients dosed with his experimental treatment have regained their appetite and seem, against all odds, to be regaining their strength.

“Feed them whatever bread they can stomach!” He says, excited and more energised to begin the day than he has been in months. “I will be along in a moment.”

On the edge of the camp, a soldier turns away and walks down the long dusty road leading out of the city. Word will soon come of plague cases amongst the besieging forces surrounding the city, and the physician will be called to help his enemies. His glory is assured.

The soldier smiles sadly, recalling the long-dead past, remembers his duty, and disappears into the early morning fog.

**Author's Note:**

> This story is very strongly based on an alternate historical version of Ancient Greece during the Peloponnesian War, particularly the Plague of Athens in 430 BCE (there's more about it [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plague_of_Athens)), but as far as I know, no incubi were involved in that. Also, my incubus is clearly not the traditional kind, which focused more on getting women pregnant with Demon Spawn, instead of helping physicians cure themselves. I plead Creative License.


End file.
